Rock, Paper, Shotgun - SimCity Is Inherently Broken, Let’s Not Let This Go.Claiming SimCity fixed, by removing the server queues, random crashes, lost cities, server drops, and the artificial restrictions placed on the game just to make it run, is like claiming a broken leg fixed because you’ve mended the crutches. The game, by its very design, is hideously broken, and like Diablo III before it, it has only served to scream a complete disregard for sense and a massive disregard for customers. So what we mustn’t do now is say, “Well, teething problems.”

These aren’t teething problems. These are continuous deep-running flaws designed to cripple the game for you as a player, simply to serve some nebulous notion of protecting the game against piracy.

Verno wrote on Mar 13, 2013, 09:16:I'm not sure why the distinction matters, there's a very solid argument to be made for the regional stuffs functionality being a justification for the connection requirement anyway. Either way I want an offline SimCity game and that's the only way I'll ever buy this after this whole debacle.

That, by the way, is the argument I see.

It doesn't matter to me what is done on the server or not. Who cares? If EA said it is and it isn't, or if they said it is and it is, or if they never said and it's either, who cares?

What matters to me is that they definitely made the decision to put some there, and from a gameplay perspective that doesn't seem necessary.

I'm not sure why the distinction matters, there's a very solid argument to be made for the regional stuffs functionality being a justification for the connection requirement anyway. Either way I want an offline SimCity game and that's the only way I'll ever buy this after this whole debacle.

SimCity is "hideously broken" by design? Ask any Sims player and they'll tell you that Maxis, at its current state, is really, really, REALLY bad at developing games. All they do is release broken shit. A game that's overpriced, disappointing, resource hungry, and which crashes all the time is pretty much the norm.

NKD wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 11:21:People need to get off the "Oh no, DRM!" rap. It's not DRM. It's something much worse. It's playing on human psychology to get more money out of you.

Can't deny this analysis. Also sucks time, which is why I almost never play with other people, except a few times a month with my bro and nephew.

It's funny, I noticed something similar with Tomb Raider multiplayer. Now that the first DLC pack has gone out, people with vanilla can't join a DLC owners MP game, and most people playing MP seem to have the DLC. I have not successfully joined one MP game since buying the game (which was value for money for the SP alone), and it seems like MP DLC is popular enough that missing out on it means you complete forgo MP. Buy DLC or else in other words.

I'm glad Simcity is "not my bag baby" and I wasn't tempted to look at this at all. A friend of mine who is a big simcity nut just reloaded the 10 year old version and is having a ball (with no possibility of having a server switched off on him).

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 12, 2013, 18:33:Depending on how they go forward with patching this... thing... I might pick it up around the holidays when it's on sale for $15-ish.

I've noticed that EA doesn't discount on Origin very much.

They don't need to (as far as I, the customer, am concerned), when places like Green Man and Amazon are selling keys and have awesome deals all the time. Since day one you could get SimCity from GMG for 20% off plus cash back or store credit.

While we're this early in the year I doubt that we'll see a worse release than SimCity the rest of the year. This one is truly something for the business books on how not to release a product and market it.

Have EA actually claimed the city simulation is at all server side? It's pretty clear that it's not, but I didn't know they'd claimed otherwise. They've said always-online is required but not that the city simulation is the reason AFAIK. It's the region simulation which seems to be server side and it's not unreasonable for EA to claim that that's an essential part of the game. I'm sure it could be done offline with no problem but that's another issue.

Well of course it isn't necessary in spite of what they say. No more necessary then D3 is - which now proves Blizzard AND Maxis are big fat liars. In fact it's wonder they haven't suffered major burns with their pants being on fire as they are. It would take nothing to patch it to move the server functions - which are minimal - to the player's PC.

"We choose the right to be who we are. We know the difference between the reality of freedom and the illusion of freedom."

The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing... I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise

To fuck over their customer base and insist on their horseshit always-on crap, Maxis insider. Isn't it obvious?

Edit 2: Interesting comment

The On-Line only issue is actually only the tip of the ice-berg – at least to me. It has been discovered by some of the players and posted in EA’s forum – that in fact the “GlassBox” engine is in fact BROKEN.

Apparently SimCity actually only simulats a very small % of the population, and the rest is relatively fake numbers called a “Shadow population”. Its absolutely game breaking around the 100k population mark as just about everything starts to fall apart.

It’s so bad that its been discovered you could NEVER make a single industrial zone, and have a happy healthy, and better functioning society.

I'll check their forums tomorrow, see how much of that is going on. The more negative reviews definitely seem to bear out that the game just goes to shit once your population reaches a certain size.